New Jersey Republicans leave voters to decipher the fine print on abortion

There is an unusually simple way for mem bers of Congress to tell voters where they stand on abortion: Put their names on legislation.

That opportunity has been sitting in plain sight in the House.

Rep. Christopher Smith, the New Jersey Republican dinosaur whose opposition to abortion has been a defining feature of his congressional career, introduced H.R. 7, the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion and Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure Act of 2025.

The measure would make longstanding restrictions on federal abortion funding permanent rather than leaving major restrictions to the annual appropriations process.

H.R. 7 is a major legislative priority of Republicans in Congress.

Smith’s position requires little decoding.

His fellow New Jersey Republicans, Reps. Tom Kean Jr. and Jeff Van Drew, have not joined Smith as co-sponsors of H.R. 7.

That distinction matters because abortion politics is filled with carefully selected words — “pro-choice,” “pro-life,” “states’ rights,” “taxpayer funding,” “late-term abortion,” “reproductive freedom” — that can allow politicians to emphasize different aspects of their positions to different audiences.

A bill is considerably harder to equivocate about.

H.R. 7 asks a concrete question: Should restrictions associated with the Hyde Amendment become permanent federal law and apply broadly across federal programs?

Smith put his name on his answer.

Kean and Van Drew have not put their names on Smith’s bill.

Yet neither man’s broader record fits neatly into a simple pro-choice/pro-life box.

Kean’s two political vocabularies

Kean’s abortion positioning has been particularly complicated.

During his 2022 congressional campaign, Kean repeatedly described himself as “pro-choice.” He said he supported abortion rights through 20 weeks, with exceptions afterward for rape, incest, and threats to the life or health of the mother, and said abortion policy after Dobbs should generally be decided by states. He also said he would oppose a federal abortion ban.

But another version of Kean’s campaign message existed online.

A difficult-to-find page on his campaign website, titled “Tom Kean Jr.: The Conservative Leader,” described Kean as a “fierce defender of the sanctity of life” who had fought to protect the unborn from New Jersey abortion laws and would continue doing so in Congress.

After his secret page became an issue, Kean scrubbed it from his website, but he apparently does not understand how the Internet works, because there’s an archived copy of the page.

“Tom (Kean) is a fierce defender of the sanctity of life, fighting every step of the way to protect the unborn from egregious abortion laws proposed in New Jersey, and will continue to do so in Congress,” says the once-hidden and now erased page, which can still be accessed on the Internet Archive.

Those are markedly different ways of presenting the same candidate.

Kean’s legislative record adds another layer.

As a New Jersey state senator, he voted against the Freedom of Reproductive Choice Act, which codified reproductive rights in state law shortly before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

Yet Kean has continued to identify himself as pro-choice and claims to oppose a nationwide abortion ban. During his 2024 campaign, he also emphasized support for in vitro fertilization and introduced legislation providing tax credits for fertility treatments.

Politico reported that Kean supported a Republican resolution favoring IVF access, although that resolution did not create an enforceable federal right.

That produces an unusually intricate political résumé: a politician who calls himself pro-choice, opposed New Jersey legislation codifying reproductive rights, advertised himself to conservative voters as a defender of “the unborn,” supports abortion access through 20 weeks, opposes a national ban, supports IVF assistance — and has not signed onto Smith’s bill permanently restricting federal abortion funding.

Whatever label voters choose to apply, they should not have to conduct an archaeological excavation of campaign websites, archived webpages, resolutions and roll-call votes to understand a congressional candidate’s position on a fundamental question of bodily autonomy.

There is a logical explanation: Kean’s position is hard to find because he is a coward.

Van Drew’s record presents a different contrast

Van Drew does not claim Kean’s pro-choice identity. After the Supreme Court overturned Roe in 2022, Van Drew publicly praised the decision.

“The Supreme Court made the right decision to return this issue to the states so they can create their own laws regarding abortion,” Van Drew said. He also criticized what he characterized as New Jersey policies supporting taxpayer-funded abortion.

That makes his absence from Smith’s H.R. 7 noteworthy for a different reason.

Smith is asking Congress to do legislatively what abortion opponents have sought for decades: transform recurring federal funding restrictions into permanent law.

Van Drew has publicly celebrated Dobbs, criticized taxpayer funding for abortion and identified himself with the anti-abortion side of the debate.

But he has not joined Smith on H.R. 7.

That does not establish why. A lawmaker may decline to co-sponsor legislation for any number of substantive, procedural or political reasons, and absence from a co-sponsor list is not itself a vote against a bill.

It does, however, leave voters entitled to ask a straightforward question:

Do you support H.R. 7 or don’t you?

The same question belongs before Kean.

The advantage of ambiguity

Abortion has been extraordinarily valuable to American political fundraising.

For decades, politicians and advocacy organizations on both sides have used abortion rights and abortion restrictions to mobilize supporters, solicit contributions and distinguish themselves from opponents.

But fundraising rhetoric is cheap compared with legislation.

A campaign email can be calibrated. A website can emphasize one message and bury another. A politician can invoke “states’ rights” when discussing one proposal, “protecting life” when speaking to another audience and “a woman’s right to choose” when addressing voters somewhere else.

Legislation requires considerably more specificity.

Do you want federal funding restrictions made permanent?

Do you support a nationwide abortion restriction?

Should federal law guarantee abortion access?

Should federal law protect IVF?

Should Washington defer to state governments?

Those questions can be answered.

And the answers need not conform perfectly to either party’s platform. A representative can oppose abortion personally while rejecting a federal ban. Another can support abortion rights while opposing public financing. Someone else can support IVF while favoring restrictions on abortion.

There is nothing inherently contradictory about drawing distinctions.

What voters deserve is enough clarity to know where those distinctions actually are.

Kean’s history demonstrates the problem vividly. In October 2022, he told a public forum that he supported a woman’s right to choose “except” in cases of rape, incest or threats to the mother’s health — wording that appeared to reverse the position he intended to express. After audience members sought clarification, Kean subsequently said he had misspoken and explained that he supported abortion through 20 weeks, with exceptions afterward.

That episode by itself could simply be a verbal mistake.

Placed alongside the separate conservative campaign webpage, his vote against New Jersey’s reproductive-rights law and his subsequent insistence that he is pro-choice, however, it illustrates why precise legislative answers matter.

Smith, at least, leaves no mystery

There is a revealing contrast here that has nothing to do with whether Smith’s position is right or wrong.

Voters know what it is.

Smith has spent decades advancing anti-abortion legislation. He introduced H.R. 7. He wants the federal funding restrictions enacted permanently.

A voter who strongly agrees with that agenda knows what Smith is trying to accomplish.

A voter who vehemently opposes it knows exactly the same thing.

That is representative democracy functioning in its most elementary form: A politician states a position, acts on it and allows citizens to judge the result.

Kean and Van Drew can provide the same clarity.

They can co-sponsor H.R. 7.

They can announce their opposition to it.

They can identify provisions they would change and introduce an alternative.

They can explain why their views differ from Smith’s.

What they should not expect is for carefully constructed labels to substitute for answers to specific legislative questions.

Abortion is too consequential for that.

Whether the voter is an abortion-rights advocate who believes government should stay out of a woman’s medical decisions or an abortion opponent who believes government has an obligation to protect fetal life, the citizen is entitled to know what the person asking for a seat in Congress intends to do with that power.

The essential question therefore isn’t whether Tom Kean Jr. calls himself “pro-choice,” whether Jeff Van Drew calls himself “pro-life,” or whether Chris Smith uses either label.

It is simpler:

What laws will you vote for?

Smith has supplied one answer.

On H.R. 7, Kean and Van Drew have not yet supplied theirs.